Gimme Shelter: Drama oversimplifies plight of teen

Friday

Jan 24, 2014 at 12:01 AMJan 24, 2014 at 12:27 PM

Gimme Shelter is a simplistic, faintly emotional account of a pregnant teen's desperate search for help, support and compassion with the huge decision she faces. It's simplistic because the script discounts debate over that decision and glosses over the messy details of the path she chooses. But it's emotional because we, and plainly some of the characters, know those messy details, even if other characters do not.

Gimme Shelter is a simplistic, faintly emotional account of a pregnant teen's desperate search for help, support and compassion with the huge decision she faces.

It's simplistic because the script discounts debate over that decision and glosses over the messy details of the path she chooses.

But it's emotional because we, and plainly some of the characters, know those messy details, even if other characters do not.

Agnes (Vanessa Hudgens) is 16 and poor, the daughter of a drug addict (Rosario Dawson) who had her too young. Agnes, who decides she wants to be called "Apple," is all piercings, ill-fitting dirty clothes and tattoos. If she needs a case study in how life can go wrong by having a baby at that tender age, she can look at Mom - a raging, staggering, yellow-toothed horror in her early 30s.

But Apple runs away, fist-fighting her mother to get out the door. With little cash, the clothes on her back and an address, she sets out to find the father she has never met.

There are misadventures along the way - sleeping in a car she breaks into, threats from a pimp, a car crash, an arrest. Her affluent, suburban dad (Brendan Fraser) has two children, a gorgeous French wife (Stephanie Szostak) and enough guilt to take her in. But the wife won't stand for it.

Hudgens seems to revel in playing hostile, ill-mannered and impulsive Apple - not at all the sort of girl you would want around if you are worried about your children. The character attracts violence and seems capable of it, too.

Where can she go? Her mother, wanting the extra welfare check, is tracking her down. As street-savvy as this girl is, she's in over her head.

Gimme Shelter has many of the hallmarks of a faith-based film - the ways it lays out Apple's dilemma, the grim details of her life that Hudgens milks, the people of faith who offer her hope and her resistance to their ministry.

A priest (James Earl Jones) and a shelter run by the understanding but no-nonsense Kathy (Ann Dowd of Side Effects and Compliance) offer sanctuary. Does she take it?

Writer-director Ron Krauss embraces the grit but fails to find many surprises. He attracted a good cast, and Hudgens, bent on leaving her Disney image behind, dives into the street language and angry look of a defiant girl who doesn't know how little she knows about how bad things are and how much worse they could become.

A better film would have been more honest with the many dead ends facing Apple.

It's the type of movie whose finale leaves you wondering, "Why do they always leave out what happens next?"

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